A few months after my younger daughter died of a fentanyl overdose at age 27, I moved to a town where I knew no one, lured by a new-construction house on an undeveloped half-acre lot. The developer had put in a few plants by the front door, but the rest of the lot was a flat, blank canvas, wide open to any designs I might want to concoct. I had ambitions: a patio, a vegetable garden, raspberry canes, a labyrinth, an herb garden, and a memorial garden for my daughter which would feature a dogwood tree.
Several years ago, when she had just graduated from college, we had taken a road trip together, driving her car from Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles where she hoped to get an internship as a stylist. A highlight of this trip had been a long conversation over lunch at the Dogwood Cafe near Mt. Shasta, one of the most extensive discussions we had had about our family dynamics; one in which I realized that I was talking to a young adult, no longer a teen, and we went deep.
I had taken a photo of the restaurant and framed a print for both of us as a memento of the conversation. I knew that the dogwood trees in the Pacific Northwest differ from the dogwood trees I had grown up with back east. In this new house in this new town, I studied to be a Master Gardener so I could make good decisions about my landscaping plan. In the course of this I met a veteran Master Gardener who showed me a trick on the iPhone: if you take a photo of a plant, the phone will search for a description of it, which is available when the info icon turns into a leaf icon.
When I began my landscaping plan in earnest, I photographed the plants and weeds in my yard to understand what was already growing on the lot. In the course of this research, I took a photo of the bush the developer had planted near the front door. I took the photo and waited for the leaf icon to appear, then clicked on it to learn that the plant was a white dogwood. I stood very still, staring at my phone, and felt two things: 1) I am not alone; and 2) I may have been led to this house by unseen guides and companions. I stared and wondered, wondered if I dared to believe.
Christine O